My class of students does a mobile project. I send them around town with a ‘treasure map’ and as they solve the various puzzles I have left them they take photos of the solution and text them to me. All the pictures and texts are automatically collected onto a web site, so that when they return they can show their friends what they did.
I am dropping out of school. I take an assessment and it seems I need to improve my reading, but I am very unmotivated. As part of a technology trial I am lent a PDA-phone with a collection of learning materials matched to my needs, but designed for the small screen: bright, brief, light-hearted, loud. I get to keep the PDA-phone for a couple of weeks, in the process learning to write and draw on it, as well as surfing the web and taking photos!
In fact, there are a huge number of possibilities for these PDA-phones, such as sharing pictures or documents, collaborative game playing, reading and writing.
All of these examples are real. We have got them working as part of the m-learning project. We are using the seductive power of these new technologies to re-inspire young learners who are dropping out of traditional learning. Research and development has been ongoing for the last two years and many learners have already been trying out these approaches and contributing to their development.
What have we learnt?
Technology balance: m-learning covers a wide range of technologies. New phones and PDAs come out every few weeks and each has more power than its predecessor.
Finding a balance between focusing on a minority (but powerful) phone or a generic (but very outdated) technology standard is essential. That balance will differ depending on your project, but being clear about it from the start will help avoid problems later.
Not a PC: It is easy to assume that the learning process will be similar to that using a PC, only at a smaller size. This is not true. In fact both the limits of the technology and the lack of control you have over how and when the learning happens means that you need a different learning model.
Bite sized: If you learn on the move, you do it in short sharp bursts and you are often surrounded by distractions (some are on your phone, like the web or other games) so learning must be engaging.
Keep a spread: Developing materials that can be used in different forms across different technologies will give the best mileage and stop them getting out of date when new phones are released.
Blended learning: The best learning materials are short. They work best when part of a bigger solution – like with the student quoted above waiting for the bus: the phone didn’t teach him all the theory, it just supported him as he tried to remember it.
Collaboration: In every single trial, the learners engaged most with learning that they could do together, either by sharing phones or by passing things between phones. Try to build learning around this.
What next?
Currently, 100 gadgets of various shapes and sizes are being sent around Britain, Italy and Sweden to (we hope) inspire young learners in all of those places.
We have developed various tools and engines to make it quicker to add more materials and have already been contacted by a number of organisations who are interested in running their own m-learning projects.
Judging from the surge in interest we have seen in the past six months, it feels as if m-learning is starting to move into mainstream delivery. Initially we were talking to researchers, but now we are being approached by large government departments and organisations interested in real training.
What else?
We have had some very interesting discussions with deaf learners who are very advanced users of text messaging and are hungry for learning opportunities. We haven’t yet touched on another rapidly growing aspect of m-learning: ‘location aware’
technology. We did not use it in our trials because of the wide range of locations we are working in, but it is a powerful way to find out facts and is already in use. For example, as I walk around the museum, my phone knows where I am and can tell me facts about the exhibit I am looking at.
Moving to the mainstream
The commercial potential of m-learning is becoming apparent in the UK. The current budget for post-16 education and training (below university level) is around £9 billion. A significant amount of this is targeted at what are called 'hard-to-reach learners'. These include the young disaffected people who were our project’s original target audience, as well as people in low level jobs; in highly mobile jobs with unpredictable hours that make it hard to commit to a fixed programme; and also people who have limited access to PCs and the Internet.
m-learning offers the opportunity to reach out to these people wherever they are and do things that are useful and meaningful. Funding follows outcomes and we have demonstrated some powerful outcomes using these technologies.
Current examples include:
Health and safety in the workplace: the largest topic that is the subject of training in the UK. We are now starting fully funded projects which allow people to practise the knowledge tests that are legally required of employers, using mobile technology to deliver the questions.
m-learning for learning disability: a major UK project to develop learning services for people with various disabilities is underway; there is great interest and excitement from people providing services to the visually impaired, the hearing-impaired, those with major physical needs (such as wheelchair and switch users) and many others.
This project is developing mainstream content for such groups as part of its official work programme.
m-learning for health: on top of the UK’s mainstream training budget there is also a separate set of initiatives that are about developing a more healthy society; these are often associated with regeneration or with preventive medicine. The potential of mobile devices here is being explored in a number of projects; one that we are involved with is using a mix of magazine-style health information with phone-based quizzes and assessment to reach pregnant teenagers in inner-city Birmingham.
m-learning for health professionals: we are beginning work with a university which is keen to apply mobile technology to the training of health professionals, using some of the more advanced handsets that are capable of creating and sending video clips as well as running sophisticated software programmes. On-demand information, the ability to share visual images and knowledge testing are just three examples of what is being explored.
m-learning for work-based learning: the government has a major commitment to promoting learning in the workplace, where there is often very little technology that can support conventional e-learning. PDAs and more sophisticated handsets with multimedia capabilities are a much more satisfactory solution than having a fixed workstation; there is considerable potential in providing learners with the PDAs or handsets with relevant content already loaded for them to use within a structured, blended learning process that includes face-to-face, phone and text-based and online tutor support.
It’s important to stress that these opportunities are representative of the mainstream, not small isolated examples. All are carefully structured to comply with mainstream funding formats and requirements. We are in discussion with several of the bodies responsible for vocational education in specific sectors (such as distribution, retail, construction and care) and are developing blended solutions with them that have a mobile element. In our view, this is the early phase of a very large and growing market:
blended learning needs to adopt a mobile component.
What is important about this project is that it has a focus on presenting learning on mobile phones and not on other wireless devices. This is because of its social context.
This context is presented as addressing social and educational problems in young adults.
The m-learning project addresses three social/educational problems relating to many young adults in the EU:
Poor literacy/numeracy - see e.g. Improving Literacy and Numeracy: A Fresh Start
Non participation in conventional education/training
Lack of access creating ICT "haves"/"have nots" resulting in inequality of opportunity The project will develop prototype products to provide information and modules of learning via inexpensive portable technologies which are already owned by, or readily accessible for, the majority of EU young adults.
This primary social focus is on unemployed and unemployable British youths who refuse to attend colleges or training centres. None of these youths have lap top computers or PDAs. All have mobile phones, which they use constantly.
An example of this project 'moving into the mainstream' is given in
this report from the Highlands of ScotlandAn example of this project 'moving into the mainstream' is given by this reports from the Highlands of Scotland:
Mobile phones used in adult m-learning project
Young adults in Highland who have not benefited from the main-stream education system are being invited to take advantage of a European research and development programme called m-learning.
Today, (Thurs 13th May, 12:30) fifteen m-learning research assistants and their mentors meet at Ross County Football Club in Dingwall to discuss the way forward and learn how they could benefit from the m-learning project.
The €4.5m, 3 year pan-European research and development project supported by the European Commission’s Information Society Technologies programme is being co-ordinated by the Learning and Skills Development Agency (LSDA) and delivered in Highland through a partnership between, The Highland Council’s Education, Culture and Sport Service through its Adult Basic Education programme and the Council’s Gypsy/Traveller Education Development programme, with the Prince’s Trust, Calman Trust, and Ross County Football Club.
The aim of the m-learning project is to try to re-engage young people into learning in an innovative way that appeals to and is accessible to them. The project is aimed at young adults, aged 16 to 24, who are most at risk of social exclusion in Europe.
M-learners are invited to become research assistants in the m-learning project which aims is developing prototype products and services which will deliver information and learning experiences via technologies that are inexpensive, portable and accessible to the majority of EU citizens.
Julie Simmons, The Highland Council’s, Adult Literacies Strategy Officer and the Highland m-learning project co-ordinator said: "The first m-learning ‘taster’ session held earlier this month in Ross-shire, north west Sutherland and the Isle of Skye was very successful with 20 m-learning research assistants and mentors attending and will be followed by a longer seven week trial in the same areas plus Lochaber attracting additional m-learning research assistants.
"The Highland m-learning pilot is quite unique in that, it is a partnership of organisations working together with a diverse group of learners, rather than a single agency. It is an example of good practice in partnership working as well as an exploration of how new technologies can be used to overcome the problems of rural isolation for learners in remote communities."
Councillor Andrew Anderson, Chairman of The Highland Council’s Education, Culture and Sport Service said: "The key to this project is the one thing that all the participants have in common, they can all use mobile phones and are proficient in sending and receiving text messages.
"The m-learning project is tapping into and investigating how the way in which we use this type of information technology can change the ways in which we learn and how this new approach to learning might attract more young people in the future to improve their basic life-skills and opportunities."
Jill Attewell, m-learning Programme Manager at the Learning and Skills Development Agency said: "The geography and the range of social issues found in the Highlands and Islands provides a uniquely challenging environment for testing both the mobile technologies and our hypothesis that these technologies can be used to engage more young people in learning. We are very pleased with the enthusiastic response of the Scottish young people and their mentors and we are looking forward to learning from and with them."
3. MOBILearn. A European Commission IST project led by Giunti Ricerca,